CUT TO:
A WHITE ROOM flashing with a rapid “weird yellow” STROBE LIGHT effect – might go green to red, to orange too?
CUT TO:
CLOSE UP on something like Jena Osman’s The Periodic Table As Assembled By Dr. Zhivago, Oculist on the wall. It’s slightly tilted. 12 to 16 words or so on the table.
[Possible words: Seizure. Sky. Next. Just stars. Watch. Fidelity. You can’t. Ribbon ship flag. This is love. Portrait of a Head. Coils. Scar. Contagion. Passenger. Gas food drama. Lawn.]
CUT TO:
A nippy series of double exposures of shears on the floor.
The sound of a match being lit.
CUT TO:
Cigarette smoke, then: “Gil’s Theme” (Always played largo) (We’ve heard it, some variation of it, every time we see the Yellow Sign tattoo) starts. Circling. Gull-voice oboe cries (a cry from the past). Liquid surf guitar bubbles, it’s a bed of tidal sea-foam under the ghostly colors of the oboe.
CUT TO:
Gil standing [wearing a black wig / under the wig her real hair is wet – the wig sits unevenly – some of it is flat and sticks out like crow feathers / the make-up she’s applied looks like a freakshow] naked /sweating /breasts heaving /belly heaving /eyes blasted wide, barely blinking
All the wires –clamps biting nipples –clamps chained to head and cunt and veins
crow laughter—pain as BLACKmadness spitting FUCK YOU
Cut to CLOSE UP of a dial needle in the RED:
11
12
13
14
crow laughter because it cannot cry
lightning strips away the mask
naked—RAPENAKED and you cannot go back-cannot go awayRAPENAKED
NIGHT again
growling
coughing
TEST
light
climbing
running
bitter wind
vision
tongues flash –parts –angles –shot –there’s no NUANCE in BLACKNESS
sparks
swimming in your own banshee-stupid bitch cunt
snapping vows –“this FACE” –“that Face” –“that BITCH” –“that whore didn’t”
“YEAHHHhhhhhhhhhhh—FUCK”
“DID”
“DID!DID!”
“yeah”
“FUckk”
secrets punctured by worms
“I’ll fuck yoo if yoo make it STOP”
“I am telling the truth mommy”
learning ten years in one day
RAPENAKED-burning up-going somewhere
blind
“fiv-shi-plo-baby-givmebab-y-givemeplea-FUCK-fucKKKK
NoNO-no-NOnowwwwwwwww”
“I’ll FUCK if yoo WANoww”
“anyTHING –confess-will –anyYESYES-What you wa-WILL”
blind
the anvil drum of you cannot GO
the anvil drum of YOU CANNOT go
“I do not want to feel the mouth of the grave splitting my cunt
nonoNO-pleas-no-owwwwwwwwWWWw”
“I’ll FUCK YOO if you STOP thisriver”
crow laughter because IT cannot cry
learning eternity in one second
CUT TO:
Lower left leg of a man in black dress pants and “new shoes” sitting on the corner of her hotel room bed. CLOSE UP of his knee, hand with a Yellow Sign ring comes into view and moves left over the knee. It drops the page it was holding on the floor.
Unnamed man: “As you’re laughing-screaming. Reach down and touch yourself.”
CUT TO: her hand moving up her thigh toward her sex.
CUT TO: BLACKNESS [a SCREAM – not a loud scream/exhaled pain – the scream is an extension of the one we were hearing.]
~*~
There was a party.
We were drinking red wine.
“Spill The Wine” came on the radio . . .
“Live.”
The clarity of a soul experience.
~*~
She had bought new shoes. Sandals. They were in a red box on a chair by her hotel room door
[Eric Burden & War “Spill the Wine” and Iron Butterfly “Iron Butterfly Theme”]
Mother Stands For Comfort
She gave up on God after he failed her. Failed to kill her father with a heart attack, or in a car accident. Suicide would have been alright too. In fact, preferable—he deserved it. And it suited the incestuous swine that stole so many hours of light and replaced them with sand and cold grey roots of shame. She gave up on Eckankar and Buddhism and 12 other disciplines she investigated. Cast off every tourniquet of maybe and not. Found the drugs and booze didn’t do shit either.
Walked and walked, in shades of afterlife, through fantasy, until she found there was no Promised Land.
Slept alone and with sharks of revenge and bareback confusion. Lived, for a time, a small-skinned life with no wings . . . Poured crows and blue into every dirty girl hieroglyph of dust.
Quivered.
Leapt.
Went from fat-slut-jockstrap to skinny to apple-cheeked to sick and tired . . .
Prowled.
Found she was not immune to the rubble.
Built a house of cards then found she couldn’t live in it without a gun.
Murmured when she knelt at the threshold where self bleeds because it can’t find a good thing.
Conjured. Cracked.
Made furniture out of the neon blur . . .
Spat at houses of Someday and Sure.
Fell off ladders . . .
Then, after being given over to the gale-force wheels of a certain drama, she found Him and was delivered.
The night, colored with the throat and roads of goodbye, had come. It brought rain and other things . . . Things that were born against backdrops of darkness.
. . . She was lying in an alley. Raped. Bleeding out—3 bullets in her chest. Left for dead. Her small hands were weak fists. She was full of the coldest shadow-kiss—freezing; when she heard his wings beat softly.
“Stay calm, Child, and we will find a way around this trouble.”
She heard his voice clearly, but couldn’t make out his features, couldn’t focus. Cobwebs and shadows fogged her vision.
“Do not be afraid when you confront youth. They are the bridge, My Sweet Lost Angel. Do not forget summer when you sleep in the quietness.”
The wind is filled with his scent. She remembers how much she loves red summer roses. The memory of their tenderness anoints the shattered contours of her lips . . .
She can hear dim drums. See a light. A pulsing yellow light. The light of a heartbeat. The heartbeat of the drums.
The drums sound like the fluttering of his wings.
There is life in the light. Wings. Faces. Sigils and skulls and darkness . . . A gathering darkness filled with teeth and thunder . . .
Things—life, is being born in that moment when the light dances with the crawling darkness . . . Things with faces of fire and volcanic laughter . . . Things of night and desire and clarity . . .
And she is their mother. The blood that flows from her breasts their milk. And they grow, reach, stretch, shoulder—lunge, dance . . . ever up—ever onward . . . they call her name as they flutter and flicker and ascend . . . She is the sea, the womb . . . She breathes and they sing . . .
And she reaches out with liquid finger to stroke the coming . . . The beginning.
She is the sea, black deeps and lava currents—a bounty of salt and temperament, her seeded dreams and memories, her arteries, groundwork and poetry . . . From her fists grainy flocks form . . . Pale yellow-white shapes—sculptures, collect, rushing and thrusting for her attentions, for her love . . .
She hardens firms. Her hair is tattered. Her lips tattered . . . and torn . . . She sighs . . . and writhes . . . Her fingers enjoined with those long-stemmed horizon-limbs of the King . . .
“Sweet Summer Knight,” she whispers.
> Voices full of different words and forgotten colors journey from the interior of some lightless, lost between and explode in the garden of her tears . . .
She whitens as they, burning with her velvet love song, feed . . . They, the tide lured from sleep, are bewitched by the peace of her golden mask . . .
The King lays his solemn white fingers on her empty heart. Takes in her last breath, smiles as she sleeps
(after the Q6 film DIN OF CELESTIAL BIRDS and Kate Bush – “Hounds of Love” and “Mother Stands For Comfort”)
A Cold Yellow Moon
by Edward R. Morris Jr. and Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
For Adam Niswander, a truly inspiring voyager!!!!!!!!!! !
“When the configuration-revealed unbinds the seals on the New Day, with the coming whorl of Black Dawn, as it embraces The Imperium That Could Not Be Seen, the stars serving the desires of Taurus, carrying Doom’s sign, will sing! And the face of the Moon will be transmogrified, as it was foretold by King Hastur through the Hyadian Pool in the days before the curse of His yellow blood was made manifest through Josephus, his prodigal son and the King in Yellow for all time, in all worlds the tatters of his corpus were allowed to touch.
When the Yellow Sign is drawn upon the Moon, all the creatures of the deeps that crawl upon their bellies or swim or walk shall rise to the dance, as beasts and the fowls of the air do bay for blood and cry out for exiled comforts. And Man, pretender to the surface of the Earth, fear-driven insect of nothing at the Beginning and End, holding only his eyeless psalms, will be but a scarlet stain upon the changing face of Earth’s green hills.”
—Philip of Navarre, The Zhou Texts
READING MAGNET... RECOGNIZED. MEADE PROFESSOR ALEXANDER J. CHAIRMAN THEORETICAL PHYSICS MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED ACCESS GRANTED...
ON DUTY: STARBIRD MISSION-CONTROL WING 23:12HRS... 23:13...
The main room of Miskatonic University Observatory's new Mission Control wing flickered so badly it felt like it was always raining during an eclipse. In that cramped, sawdust-and-plaster lockdown that felt like a hasty afterthought, twenty tele-visor screens ringed the room, with audio-telephone switches and lavaliere microphones everywhere between each.
Some screens merely showed what could only be described as a continuous storm of 'snow'; some, at any given time, very much not, as the Big Day drew nearer and nearer. The great Westinghouse computing-engines which gave them life popped and echoed within forests of vacuum-tubes behind cold-iron icebox walls, and lit the room an absinthe Christmas in yellows and reds and greens signifying Zero-One, On-Off, endlessly permuted.
As Above, so Below, as Within so Without: Surrounding every screen were a whole kitchen drawer's worth of toggles and buttons, more than most civilians could even comprehend. All the work-stations from Tracking to Thermodynamics and back had their own specific color. There was no more guesswork in that room than there was dust, though plenty of excited chatter rang the walls at all hours.
Nothing like this had ever been done before, and the press wasn't getting anywhere near this except when they were sanctioned to. Not yet. Not yet. When the RCA-Victor (for Dr. Tesla would allow no Edison product on the grounds) sound-projection horns above each work-station tinnily signaled not shift change, but Apogee, Approach... Splashdown...
On that holy day, then the skies could rain ticker-tape. Just now, the chicken-wired windows in the Mission Control wing were battened against such weather. And no photographers, either. They wouldn't know how to shoot this:
~*~
:warm. a dainty breeze. blue’s ardor above the lacy drape of green trees
:a summer departure
:after the song-smooth climb into sky’s weathermaker mountains, all its instruments to quest…
:in the glass starship—searchlight, star-ward, Starbird
:in the BLACK
:black
:starlit
:blackness
:from Earth,
(gleaming, freezing, all its balanced systems and the ardent, laboring eyes (lodged in inquiring) behind them)
(ready to be introduced to beguile, undergo the beauty of Awakening, to receive fact and data… or shadows if need be, hoping for grandeur)
:to
:Luna
:sea…
~*~
:AWAKE ZION I AWAKE. Test message. STARBIRD transmitting. POWERING ON SUB-MINDS ONE THROUGH
SEVEN.IRA-A2 ISHMAEL-ISHMAEL APPARATUS-2. OFF LINE OFF LINE OFF LINE
REROUTING
AWAKE. PLEASEWAIT.PLEASEWAIT...
~*~
awake we are awake we
:AHAB-ONE. VERIFYING INTACT MEMORY PLEASEWAIT PLEASEWAIT PLEASEWAIT
~*~
:Dawn. :Dawndawndawn at dawning rim of
:sky. the sky clicks in our guts. The sun warms our Mind
:Mind. Separates into. Brains. One through seven,
children of the first Ishmael probe
:We go to find Ishmael-Prime, our absent brother,
lend him our hands, our hands, all our hands
as he Prime needs them. If,
we have more. More hands.
~*~
:In the cold, the dark, the vast beast-whistle and Down,
the litany warms every interchangeable part:
~*~
We go because this is Just.
Logical.
We go to find out what happened
We go to pick our sibling up,
and run it out of there.
We go in the name of those who made us,
To throw down our bodies like army ants
Between the Makers who left their mark,
And the Unknown.
Into the cold and soundless
scream and the black we go, we go
Toward the Ishmael probe that waits
in the secret narration of the stain. The stain.
:Going to see the Stain.
~*~
The 'threshing-floor of the new Millennium', (as Dr. Marcus fulsomely described the place to Whipple Phillips, when the great industrial tycoon came down from Niagara Falls to tour what The Investors had wrought) looked more like the bridge of a ship, or the observation-deck of a busy factory floor.
But here, they looked out, not down, and listened. Here, the bridge of the ship was on Earth, while the ship itself was merely an elaborate set-piece, blown beyond Mother Earth's gravity-well with the massive liquid-oxygen engines that made the Serbian cry when they were wheeled from the specially-built foundry floor of the Barks & Sons factory in Schenectady by double teams of oxen, straining the traces of this new thing not even their drovers understood.
Straining toward the skies of this new age of the world. Here, what men on Earth called clockworks were beaten down smaller even than the Swiss level at the Norris Locomotive Works, into a radio-controlled system of toggles and buses to rival the automata of any World's Fair, in one tiny ship!
Every function of the Starbird had a check, a balance, a fail-safe. Every one of these, and the whole clear-glass firecracker in general, could be shut off manually from Earth. Dr. Tesla insisted on it. It was the only way he would lend his hand to the project, though he claimed to not have sufficient English to explain why.
The fuel-tanks had to be built on site, to affix directly to the craft. Westinghouse wired it, and the Mohawk Company nearly bowed out of the project coughing up all that glass. Tesla insisted that Control remain at Miskatonic due to the superior quality of the observatory. To him, it was all just Math.
But he treated his 'borrowed minds' as though they were ensouled, behind the golden-yellow tinted triple panes of their brass diving-bell heads. Therein, only the single iris of each of Tesla's photographer crony, old Muybridge's “special” cameras; red-lined diagnostic dials and differently-labeled lights glared in place of eyes, above fabulously complicated and only tangentially humanoid bodies whose parts could be interchanged on the Lunar surface during the mission.
&nbs
p; ~*~
It was Tesla, too, who used a very simple process with nickel and cadmium to “re-circulate” the power supplies of every one of the “IRA,” or Intelligent Robot Automata. Half the power loss could be drawn back into the batteries by this direct-current setup. This also carved mass from the rocket in great chunks when the ad hoc Design Committee found out how many galvanic batteries could be left behind on Earth as a result of the Serbian's foresight and frugality.
A larger, also-DC model was employed in Pip-7's guts to power Tesla's “particle detector”, which was busily measuring a previously undiscovered sort of ionizing energy that Dr. Tesla called “cosmic radiation” after his colleague Henri Becquerel's research. (Tesla crowing about this 'new form of energy from outside the solar system' did nothing to make the doomsayers in the press stop yapping like yard mutts that couldn't see past the ends of their own leashes, the Professor thought sourly.)
~*~
But even Tesla couldn't make those screens stop flickering. It wasn't just the flicker in that room, but having to do ten men's work from this station; a whole fleet of men, Navy sailors with better heads for maths, order, routine and round-the-clock. The only round-the-clock brass appointed to Control was their Captain Castaigne.
Alden Castaigne was U.S. Army Cavalry, hand-picked and commissioned by a Rear Admiral for his ability to talk to Tesla's scientists out in Colorado as much as his expertise on long-range ballistics and telegraphy from his own service in the Pacific.
Good civilian liaison, and Meade understood the wisdom of this rather circuitous choice. The problem with giving the execution of any project to scientists, Meade long put forth to his fellows, was that scientists don't know how to work. He should have added that he didn't either. He was tired, and he wanted to go home. But this objective was bigger than just one man.
The King in Yellow Tales: Volume 1 Page 22